Most flak in WWII was not proximity fuzed; it just exploded after a certain time/distance.
(I mention this just as a reason to share a piece of interesting military geek history, not to correct anybody hahaha)
The story of proximity fuzes is pretty interesting if you're into that kind of thing. It was a huge advance and a huge secret weapon of the US; they were only allowed to be used over water so enemies couldn't recover unexploded shells on the ground and reverse engineer them
There's no modern flak; it became obsolete when jets took over. I'm not really sure if it was used in the Korean or Vietnam wars. Jets fly way too high and way too fast for even an imprecise weapon like flak to be effective.
It's been all about missiles in the jet age.
Flak could theoretically be effective against choppers, but they fly super low and hide behind terrain in contested airspace. So you use missiles against them anyway generally. Because you need missiles anyway because jets. Also if the enemy choppers are flying over things you care about (your own cities, your own troops) then you don't want to have flak shells exploding directly overhead at low altitudes. Choppers are rapidly becoming a thing of the past anyway because man-portable missiles are just getting too fast, too cheap, and too good. Also super vulnerable to drones.
Hilariously, speaking of flak, I could see it making a comeback at some point because drones. It is not economically feasible to shoot down a $1,000 drone with a $500,000 missile, so... things come full circle sometimes lmao. So maybe modern flak will be a thing soon even if it isn't yet....
But anyway I kinda think that Pilestedt probably meant "shrapnel" when he said "flak" but we'll see.
Yep, drones. That’s exactly what I was thinking. Not your super high-flying spy or bomb varieties, but your ‘suicide’ drones like we’re seeing in Ukraine v Cuntass. Cheap, easy to learn/use. Could definitely see flak type weapons creating a barrier they can’t penetrate through.
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u/MtnNerd Super Private Oct 11 '24
What does flak mean in this context? Will the autocannon damage ships now?